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Thursday, 15 March 2012

Lately, I’ve been having some very exciting
discussions about the BBC’s adaptation of The C-Word. I’m loath to ever say too much about what’s going on with the
drama, for fear of jinxing it at a time when there’s still plenty that could
get between it and your telly screen, but suffice to say it’s moving along
verrrry nicely and, frankly, is making me feel like rather a lucky bastard.

This week, myself and Team C-Word were
chatting about what this blog meant to me throughout my first experience of
cancer – the short answer to which is everything. I’m sure I’ve said before
that I just can’t understand how people deal with The Bullshit without a blog,
knowing how valuable it was in giving me something other than the obvious to
talk about. See, because everything I was going through was written down on the
blog, and any questions anyone had were hopefully answered within it, folk
weren’t talking so much about my cancer as my writing – and for me, that was something really special.

Hence, as the blog gathered pace,
eventually becoming the basis for a book, it felt like I’d somehow turned the
lemons of The Bullshit into the lemonade of something that worked to my
advantage; something tangible that I could slap onto a table and say ‘THAT’S what I got from cancer’. Better yet are the brilliant memories that the blog-to-book
(and-hopefully-to-telly) experience has granted me; the wonderful people it’s
brought into my life; the times I can look back on and feel at once happy and
lucky and overwhelmingly proud.

This time around with The Bullshit, though,
things are rather different – and, with my book long since published and my
blog more established than exciting, there’s disappointingly less lemonade to
be drunk… and rather more of the sour stuff. I guess it’s the same with
treatment, too: having chemo when you think you can be cured is one thing;
having chemo to prolong your life is quite another. It’s nothing that can be
helped, of course – it’s simply the nature of my new diagnosis: there’s just less
optimism to be had; less ambition. But while all that’s terribly sad, I’m not
in the least bitter about it. And why? Well, because of all of the above.
Because I’ve had my lemonade; I’ve
had my luck; and I’ve had all the lovely memories that came with it. And while
I refuse to accept that there isn’t plenty more to be had on the lovely-memory
front, I do appreciate that, with the sticking point of terminal cancer, those
memories might be a little harder to make.

I say ‘make’ rather than ‘find’ very much
on purpose, for I’m not talking so much about the someone-popping-over-for-a-lovely-Sunday-afternoon
memories as the memories that come about through determination; through graft;
through nobody’s making but your own. Take the book, for example. The book
didn’t just happen; I made it happen
– and I’m really ruddy proud of it, thank you very much. And while, in the
situation I now find myself, it’s a helluva lot more difficult to make that
kind of fall-into-shit-and-come-out-smelling-of-roses thing come about, it
doesn’t mean that I – and those around me – can’t make some good of the dog
turd in which we’re currently knee-deep.

Which is precisely why last weekend, I and
a team of 40-odd of family and friends – under the guise of ‘Lisa’s Lovelies’ – completed
the Marsden March, a 14-mile walk between the Marsden’s two centres in Chelsea
and Sutton, raising almost £14,000 – and counting – for the hospital that’s responsible
for my care. (And since so much of that total has been so kindly donated by you,
the readers of this blog, I hope you’ll count yourselves every much a
part of Lisa’s Lovelies as those who marched on Sunday.)

I knew it’d be a special day. I knew it
because so many people were making such an effort to participate; I knew it
because we’d got the best team t-shirts in the history of fundraising (which,
by the way, were very kindly printed at cost price by the super-cool Corporate Wear Ltd – do check them out); I knew it because we’d done so well on our
sponsorship that we’d had to raise our target three times over before the event; I knew it because the weather
forecast was looking spectacularly in our favour, and I knew it because P and
my Dad had agreed to wear tutus. But I never could have realised quite how special it would turn out to be. So
special, in fact, that 11 March 2012 will forever remain etched in my mind as
one of the most wonderful days of my life.

12 March 2012 and the days that followed,
however? Not so much. Because when you add my propensity to over-organise
myself into a panicked frenzy to 14 miles round a bumpy course in an unfamiliar
wheelchair mere days after a chemo session, what you’re left with is a hopeless
mess of pain and puking for several days thereafter. But not even that could detract
from my enthusiasm for the day of the Marsden March – as my Dad pointed out
when fetching me some painkillers the following day.

‘What you did yesterday…’ he began.

‘What we
did yesterday,’ I corrected.

‘Okay, whatever,’ he conceded. ‘Nobody will
ever forget that, y’know. It was a really special memory. Every single person
on that team had a fantastic time.’

I thought back to the smiles and jokes that
accompanied our team all the way around the 14-mile course; how nobody moaned
or whinged; how everyone nattered and skipped and waved and sang their way
through, right until the finish line – and how emotional crossing that line was, not just for us but, judging on the tears in the eyes of those clapping us
across, plenty of others too.

‘I know you feel like shit now, Lis,’ he
went on, ‘but it’s really important that you hang onto that memory. Life is all
about days like yesterday.’

Dad was right, of course (there’s a reason
I call him Yoda): these moments are the whole damn point. They’re especially
poignant, though, when they come from a place that’s less than special. And I
don’t think Lisa’s Lovelies will mind me speaking on behalf of them when I say
that it was something really quite incredible for us to be able to turn a state
of affairs as monumentally shitty as this into something so good; so positive;
so optimistic. And so useful, too – because as grateful as we are that we’ve
been able to do something helpful by raising so much money for the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity, we’re equally grateful at having been able to turn the
lemons of the reason we were participating into the well-deserved, finish-line
lemonade of the brilliant day out it became.

Which is exactly what I mean about creating
good memories yourself. They might be hard work, they might be moving, they
might give you blisters, and they might end up making you utterly,
exhaustingly, on-the-verge-of-being-shipped-off-to-the-hospice ill, but that
just makes them all the more worthwhile. And it’s all as simple as a matter of
perspective.

You see, our Marsden March was definitely
emotional – but never was it maudlin. Rather than Lisa’s Lovelies mourning what
I’ve lost (and will inevitably lose), we instead celebrated our part in
something hopeful; something that was giving back to the hospital that’s
keeping me alive. All of which meant that, for one glorious day, I wasn’t a secondary
cancer patient, but just another member of a kick-ass team who sure (as sure as
my husband looks daft in a tutu) know how to put the fun into fundraising.

8 comments:

All the Lovelies should be so chuffed with themselves - what an epic achievement - and wonderful memories. Your friends and family must have been bursting with pride as you crossed that finish line. *high five*

What you've said rings so true for us at the moment. My lovely M has recently been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's and we're reeling. But, knowing that our family time is shorter means we're making plans for making great memories and hopefully we'll be able to face it all with a similar bollocks-to-it-all attitude.

Would it be inappropriate to say that, in the unspeakably charming photo of you and P, all I could think was that "Lisa's Lovelies" was referring to the cracking pair of knockers the words were adorning.

My darling daughter put me on to your blooody brilliant blog a few weeks ago! I got the book for my kindle and read it in a couple of hours. You are my kinda girl! My daughter is your age, I'm "older", and going through what you are, but now 11 years into treatment, on my 7th lot of chemo as we speak! You have inspired and prompted me to do what I've wanted to do for years...get it all in black and white instead of random words and thoughts swimming around in my head during hundreds of insomniac hours. My daughter and I are writing a blog together,from both our viewpoints! Never give up! Its all we have! I know exactly how you are feeling inside, honest!! Jacqui xx

I just read your earlier post about when you learned you were BRCA positive. I didn't realize that you were. I am as well. Your words from this post that seem especially powerful to me are these: "Having chemo when you think you can be cured is one thing; having chemo to prolong your life is quite another." So serious, and then you go on to say it's the nature of the situation. You're pretty amazing. Congrats on the fundraising event. Great post.

Eh up

Welcome to the website of me, Lisa Lynch: author, editor, blogger, wife, Ram, telly-addict, doofus, cancer bitch (but not, I hasten to add, cancer's bitch). The latter of those things is what initially got me blogging, swearing my way through The Bullshit following a pesky breast-cancer diagnosis at 28. Some three years down the line – with newly grown hair, a newly published book and a newly perky rack – I dared to assume that I'd seen the worst… only for the c-word to crop up once more: this time in my bones and brain, and this time incurable.

And so, from being a blog intended to chart my evolution from 'the girl who has cancer' to merely 'the girl', it seems we're back to the former. (If, indeed, it's still acceptable to even call yourself a girl in your thirties. Which, let's be honest, it probably isn't.) But before you write this off as Just Another Moany Health Blog, stick with me. Because cancer or no cancer, curable or incurable… I'll still tell it the way I see it. The universe might be in control of what’s going on in my body, but I'm in control of what’s going on in my blog. Which is why I hope you'll continue to join me as I write my way through my experiences. You see, this isn't a story about some poor, unlucky lass being taken down by cancer; it's simply a story about the extraordinary life of an ordinary girl woman.

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